The 7 absolute best laptops for 2026

Haley Henschel

Apple's latest MacBook Air is a fantastic pick for the everyday macOS user, including most professionals and college students. Anyone needing a polished, relatively portable, and impeccably priced mid-range laptop should put it on their shortlist.

Read Mashable's full review of the 15-inch Apple MacBook Air (M5).

The MacBook Air has always been an excellent laptop, but in 2026, it's become my standard bearer, my touchstone — the one I compare against virtually every other laptop that crosses my desk. Its M5 chip offers unrivaled performance for the price, whether you're using it for basic single-core tasks (like web browsing) or more demanding multi-core workloads (like occasional light video editing). Its build quality is also superb. Its Liquid Retina display is sharp and vibrant; its speakers sound incredible; its Magic Keyboard is satisfyingly snappy; and its smooth haptic touchpad gives it a premium feel. It's actually very rare to see the latter at this price point.

While it's not what I'd call a battery life overachiever — see: some of the Windows laptops on this list — the MacBook Air still lasts well over two workdays per charge. We got almost 18 hours out of it in a video rundown test.

I think most people will appreciate the larger screen on the 15-inch MacBook Air, but if you'd prefer a cheaper, more portable option, there's a 13-inch size, too. They're almost identical; the 15-incher just has two extra speakers and a slightly better GPU in its base model.

If you prefer Windows, the 2026 Asus Zenbook A14 is my top choice for almost anyone who needs a new daily driver. It actually makes a great MacBook Air alternative if you want a general-purpose ultraportable with better battery life, an OLED display, and more ports.

Asus updated my beloved Zenbook A14 with Qualcomm's fresh Snapdragon X2 Elite processor for 2026. It's more expensive than the original version from last year, but it's definitely worth the upcharge. It used to lag behind same-gen MacBooks, but it's now one of the only devices that can keep up with both single- and multi-core tasks — so things like basic word processing and light video editing, respectively. In fact, in multi-core scenarios, it's almost 20 percent faster than the MacBook Air. At the time of writing, it was the seventh-fastest laptop in our entire testing database, beating 92 percent of the competition; other stragglers include the MacBook Pro and many beefy PCs geared toward gaming and creative work. (This is just in the context of our artificial performance benchmark, by the way. The competition won't throttle you as much when you're running demanding software IRL, but the Zenbook A14's results are amazing nonetheless.)

That impressive performance is boosted when you factor in this 14-inch laptop's battery life test results. It lasted over 27 hours on a single charge, up from 22 hours in the previous generation. It's the third longest-lasting laptop we've ever tried.

The Zenbook A14 is made of a magnesium-aluminum alloy called "Ceraluminum" that's durable, scratch-resistant, and deceptively lightweight. It weighs just 2.4 pounds, or 0.3 pounds less than the 13-inch MacBook Air. That doesn't sound like a huge difference, but I was shocked the very first time I picked one up. It still feels super sturdy despite its featheriness, fortunately, so I'd have no qualms about toting it to an office, airport, or coffee shop. (You'll want to show it off in public, by the way. That Ceraluminum chassis has a ceramic look and feel to it, and it's adorned with reflective gold Asus logos that remind me of jewelry. It's very "organic modern" and unique.)

For what it's worth, Asus also makes a 16-inch model called the Zenbook A16. It doesn't last quite as long but offers way more power, and it adds an SD card slot in addition to a sharper, brighter, smoother OLED touchscreen. It's also an excellent choice.

This 16-inch Chromebook is a durable, practical pick for users with the most basic workloads and the strictest budgets. Its large screen is handy for watching movies.

The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 is nothing special, but it has no major flaws and doesn't feel like a clunker. (We've tried much nicer Chromebooks, but they cost upwards of $750 to $1,000. Just get a MacBook Air at that point.) It also happens to be the fastest sub-$500 laptop we've tried, if you don't count the MacBook Neo with Apple's education discount. Since it's a Chromebook Plus, it supports some exclusive AI features that aren't available on regular Chromebooks, like Live Translate and Help me read/write.

This puppy clocked in at just over 14 hours per charge, easily beating our 10-hour median for the Chromebook category; it's the third longest-lasting Chromebook we've ever tried. You won't have to worry about it dying in the middle of a Severance episode or a homework session.

The Chromebook Plus 516 isn't what I would call "portable," but it's on the lighter side for a 16-inch device. Its large 1200p matte display is rated at only 300 nits, but we found that it looks much brighter in person. Its plastic design is pretty boring, but it feels sturdy and doesn't have any issues with hinge strength or annoying fingerprint smudges. Its keyboard has a satisfying feel (and a numpad!), and it comes with an HDMI port if you want to hook it up to a monitor or TV. As an extra bonus, it's often on sale for as low as $300. Even at full price, though, you're not going to find a better value in the "under $500" realm.

If you're trying to spend well under $1,000, and you want a laptop that feels more premium than it really is, Apple's MacBook Neo is undoubtedly the best budget laptop you can buy.

Read Mashable's full review of the Apple MacBook Neo.

The MacBook Neo is, in one word, a game-changer. Most cheap Windows laptops and Chromebooks have plastic components, but this thing has the same luxe, all-aluminum build quality as any other MacBook. You miss out on extra fixings like keyboard backlighting, a haptic trackpad, and Touch ID (on the base model, at least), but you still get a pretty Liquid Retina display and great speakers. It's a little thicker than a 13-inch MacBook Air, but weighs the same.

The Neo's A18 Pro processor is technically a pared-down iPhone chip, but don't be fooled: It's extremely impressive for a budget laptop CPU. In simple single-core workloads (web browsing, word processing), the Neo is just as fast as a last-gen M4 MacBook Air. Most other Windows laptops we've tried in the last two years, including five that cost over $2,000, don't feel as snappy in such scenarios.

The Neo lasted 14 hours and 50 minutes in our battery life benchmark. It lags behind its M-series peers there — our battery life median for MacBooks was 19 hours before it arrived — but it's an overachiever at its price point. Our median for other sub-$1,000 Windows laptops and Chromebooks is just 10.5 hours.

...Did I mention that the MacBook Neo starts at just $599? Better yet, students pay just $499 with Apple's education discount.

The Alienware 16X Aurora is my top pick for anyone who wants to upgrade to a current-gen gaming laptop, especially one that isn't too obnoxious.

The 16X Aurora is a nice mid-ranger with enough power to handle any AAA game you throw at it. The model I tested had a high-end Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, which easily beats the MacBook Pro's M5 chip in demanding multi-core workloads. (It's the fourth-fastest laptop we've ever tried on that point, and only one of two that cost under $3,600.) Its RTX 5070 GPU had no problem handling Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most graphically taxing games available. It even hit the game's 60fps minimum at its native 1,600 resolution without any AI upscaling turned on.

The 16X Aurora's design features a slew of premium components, including a satisfying keyboard, a nice mix of ports (mostly located on its rear for easy cable management), and an absolutely amazing display. It has a high-end 240Hz refresh rate, a 2.5K resolution, and an anti-glare finish that makes it comfy to stare at for hours. It doesn't have any RGB accents except some keyboard backlighting, so it's not very "gamer-y" (in a good way, IMO).

Stamina-wise, we got five hours and 40 minutes out of the 16X Aurora. That doesn't sound like a good number, but it's well above our current four-hour median for gaming laptops. They prioritize performance over battery life.

Professional creatives like photo editors, video editors, and content creators — anyone who runs intensive apps on the reg, really — will be served incredibly well by the M5 MacBook Pro.

Read Mashable's full review of the Apple MacBook Pro (M5).

The M5 MacBook Air is a beyond-fine pick for most use cases, but the M5 MacBook Pro offers some upgrades that are valuable for professional creatives — including content creators. (Jools LeBron of "very demure, very mindful" fame uses a MacBook Pro to edit videos and stay in touch with her fans.) It's got built-in fans that prevent thermal throttling when you're running heavy workloads for long periods of time, plus useful extra ports like an SDXC card slot, plus a much nicer display. Its crisp mini-LED screen has a 120Hz refresh rate and maxes out at an ultra-bright 1,600 nits for HDR content. You can further upgrade it with an optional nano-texture finish that minimizes distracting reflections.

What's more, this is the longest-lasting MacBook we've ever tried. It ran for 21 hours and 17 minutes before dying.

Competing Windows laptops have dedicated GPUs for better gaming and raw graphics power, as well as snazzy OLED touchscreens. But no one else offers the MacBook Pro's elite combination of great performance, great build quality, and great battery life for well under $2,000. It's also pretty lightweight and compact for a desktop replacement.

The HP OmniBook 3 16 is a svelte and understated big-screened notebook that's ideal for chronic charger-forgetters.

Many laptops boast an all-day battery life, but the OmniBook 3 16 with Qualcomm's base Snapdragon X chip has an all-days battery life. It managed to hit a ridiculous 40 hours and 14 minutes in our video rundown test before dying, making it the longest-lasting laptop we've ever tested by a wide margin. (Our previous battery life champ, the OmniBook 5 14 with the Snapdragon X Plus chip, lasted 32.5 hours per charge.) Snapdragon-powered laptops are usually battery life freaks, in our experience, but this one's stamina is next-level. It lasts almost twice as long as the M5 MacBook Pro, our longest-lasting MacBook.

While the OmniBook 5 14 isn't as poweful, flashy, or premium-feeling as some of the other laptops on this list, it's still a sleek and solid laptop. Its island-style keyboard is snappy and easy to get used to. Its speakers are above-average and fine for most people's usage purposes. Its 1200p IPS display is colorful — and huge. As a 16-inch laptop, the OmniBook 3 16 comes in at a relatively average weight of 3.65 pounds, but it measures just 0.58 inches thin. It's one of the thinnest Windows laptops we've tried in the past two years, beating out most 14-inchers.

My review unit, which is available only on HP's website, is priced at $1,629.99 with a generous 32GB of RAM with 1TB of storage. I think the variant with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is better for most people at $1,259.99. (Those are the specs I recommend for the average person's daily driver.) If you can get away with even less storage and memory, the OmniBook 3 16 starts at only $999.99 with 8GB RAM and 256GB of storage. There's also an Amazon-exclusive variant that sells for $1,099.99 with 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage, which is a better deal than what HP offers for the same specs.

A laptop with 512GB of storage and 16GB of memory (RAM) is going to be a solid daily driver and a future-proofed investment for most people. That said, if you're a PC gamer or someone who dabbles in creative work (like graphic design or photo and video editing), I recommend defaulting to 1TB of storage with 32GB of RAM to accommodate your heavier workload.

Many budget laptops start with just 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, which is workable for casual users who mainly browse the web, write documents, and send emails. However, you'll probably have to supplement that with an external hard drive eventually, unless you stash most of your files in the cloud.

There are two huge pros to buying a refurbished laptop, one being that they're usually sold at a steep discount. By opting for "new to you" (instead of "brand-new, fresh out the box"), you can maximize your budget and score specs that would normally be out of your price range. Secondly, buying refurbished is just plain good for the environment. Every pre-owned laptop purchase keeps a still-usable device out of a landfill.

The key is to make sure any refurbished laptop you buy is in good-enough condition to last a few years and protected by a decent warranty. For more tips, check out Mashable's guide to buying refurbished tech.

The laptops we review get put to work as our primary computers. This includes trying any unique software or use cases they support. We also subject all of our loaners to a multi-app/tab stress test and Primate Labs' Geekbench 6, which measures CPU performance in common tasks. Gaming laptops get put through additional graphical benchmarking.

To gauge a laptop's stamina, we conduct a battery rundown test that involves playing a looped 1080p version of "Tears of Steel," a short open-source Blender movie, at 50 percent brightness and 50 percent volume. Ideally, we hope to get at least 19 hours of battery life from MacBooks, 14 hours from Windows laptops, 10 hours from Chromebooks, and four hours from gaming laptops. (They're notoriously power-hungry.)

As we're using a laptop, we zero in on certain components to evaluate its build quality. These include the display, keyboard, touchpad, webcam, speakers, and ports. We also assess its overall aesthetic and portability.

We determine the ultimate value of a laptop by comparing its performance, design/build quality, and battery life to other laptops with similar pricing, specs, release dates, and use cases. We consider any accessories it comes with, any upgrades from its predecessor(s), and its future-proofing.